Vacation for Little Kat

We had planned to send Little Kat to visit his grandparents for two weeks this summer. He felt he did not get enough time with him last winter when the family spent a week out there. So I found some plane tickets to give Little Kat a two week break.

Little Kat planned to return from his grandparents house, spend the weekend with us, then hop back on a plane to see his dad for the summer. Well those plans to visit dad fell through. I thought maybe we could extend Little Kat's trip with his grandparents. Little Kat lobbied for an extra two weeks.

I had some free time on my hands one night. I called up the airlines. They told me there was a flight exactly two weeks after the original one Little Kat had planned to take. I worried that I would be charged some exhorbitant flight modification fee. Turns out I only needed to pay the difference in airfare price which turned out to be ten bucks.

The family drove Little Kat to the airport this weekend. We accompanied him in the check in line. He already had his boarding pass thanks to Kit Kat printing it out the day before. When we arrived at the bag check counter, the guy in front of us was annoying and arguing with the airlines rep.

Luckily Little Kat had a departure gate that routed him through a security line that was short. Unfortunately his flight was delayed for about an hour. I heard that Little Kat was greeted at his destation by grandma and pop-pop. They took him right to Sonic for a delicious dinner. The next morning he went with them to the movies. I predict a fun summer for Little Kat this year.

Reward for Hard Work

This year Little Kat built a retaining wall in our back yard. It was really wide. Maybe spanned 24+ feet. It was between one and two feet high. The wall was difficult to erect because it is on a hill. Little Kat muscled through the effort.

Some of the work digging post holes was done as a punishment because Little Kat kept getting zeros at school for not turning work in. The majority of the work was done in exchange for me buying him an NVIDIA Shield and a gaming computer kit.

The NVIDIA Shield is a small handheld Android device. As such, it plays Android games (apps). It is supposed to make the games easier because the Shield itself is a super joystick/gamepad. I had actually heard of the Shield before.

Little Kat wanted an awesome gaming computer. He needed a good Intel CPU. He also needed a kicking video card. Little Kat figured the best bang for his buck was to buy a bare bones computer kit that he would assemble himself.

Initially I told Little Kat I would fund $300 worth of computer parts for his gaming computer. Unfortunately he found that the games he wanted required more horsepower. His minimal specs required $500 of computer parts. We renegotiated our agreement, added some more work to the retaining wall job, and his budget jumped up to $500 worth of computer parts.

Today we finally purchased his gaming computer kit. The video card had been out of stock for a few days. When I first clicked the purchase button, the web site froze. I removed all items from my cart. Then I added them again. The transaction went through. Since Little Kat is spending a month with his grandparents this summer, I am shipping the parts directly to their house.

Building your own computer should be part of any young man's coming of age. I am glad to play a small role in that quest for Little Kat.

Lunch Time

I had to work on Monday. Could not get that many days off. That's okay. I planned to work from my dad's basement. When I arrived at my dad's house, he was concerned that my cousin was still asleep. She went out the prior night. So maybe she was worn out.

My dad worried my cousin was sick. Nope. Just a case of jetlag. I had planned to go out to lunch with my cousin. Took a long lunch break from work. I drove to a restaurant that I used to frequent at my last job. I also asked some friends to come join me and my cousin for lunch.

We arrived early. Strangely enough, the restaurant did not even open until 11:30am for lunch. Weird. We were the first customers. My friends arrived and we all ordered. I just wanted to get some of their help yourself soup bar. Delicious broccoli and cheddar soup awaited me.

After I came back to the table from a soup run, my cousin exclaimed that my friends were very young. Well yeah. I met my friend at community college. She was older than the typical kids that are normally in my classes. But she was still young. She brought along her younger sister to make matters worse. LOL.

This restaurant was pretty weak this time around. The soup was delicious. But they stopped serving the wraps that my friend enjoyed so much. Plus they were late serving my cousin a pizza that turned out to be missing the toppings she requested. I think we shall not be returning to this restaurant. Come to think of it, the waiter screwed up my order the last time I went. I am crazy for going back.

I looked at my watch and lunch was over. My cousin took a quick picture of me and my friends outside the restaurant. Then I drove home real fast to get back to work. After work I helped my brother retrieve my mom's car from the auto body shop. Some neighbor backed into the fender. My brother also got the back bumped painted.

Family From Abroad

My brother and I took off from work on Friday. We drove out to the international airport on the other side of town. Fought rush hour traffic that was not too bad. My cousin from overseas came to visit us. She recognized us before I recognized her. Her hair was different from her last visit.

We dropped by the house first. My cousin and dad cried as they thought about my mom's passing away earlier this year. Then my cousin called up a couple of my mom's friends to arrange a meetup. After that we went to my brother's work.

It had been a long time since I went to my bro's work. And back then I only saw the front of his work. This time we went into one of the buildings. My cousin wanted to meet my brother's boss and coworker who were there when we buried my mom.

We met at the ballroom, which they rent out for events like weddings. Everything was outlined in purple for the next day's wedding. After seeing my brother's coworkers, we took a tour of the grounds. They had a lot of land. There were many improvements planned for this year like cottages and putt putt golf.

Next we went to my mom's grave. My brother pulled out the old flowers from before. He replaced then with new ones that he staked into the ground. Next we went grocery shopping. My cousin wants to cook for my dad and brother. Back at my dad's house, my brother had to throw out a lot of old food so my cousin would not cook it.

My dad was surprised we were gone for so long. We hit up three places. I guess that took three hours. This is going to be a busy visit for my cousin. It might be the last time we see her.

Missing Defiance

Today I left work a bit early to meet my friend at the library. We are about to take our video game to the next level. The prototype works good. The rules are in place. It is now time to expand this thing. There is one problem this week though. My cousin from overseas is coming to visit. I am not going to have a lot of time to work on this game.

Tonight I was scheduled to watch the first episode of Defiance season two. This is a Syfy channel original series that caught us by storm last year. I have been looking forward to the new season for quite some time. I got home in time, ate my dinner, and had an hour to kill before the show started.

Since I am on a tight schedule, I figured I would work on the video game. An hour went by fast. Kit Kat called me from upstairs and said Defiance had started. I was in the programming zone though. When you get the in zone, you got to bang out code. It is when you are most productive .There are a million thoughts that need to get put into action. You can't stop when you are in the zone.

Obviously I missed Defiance today. Luckily Syfy is on demand. I can watch it later. I did come upstairs an hour later to tune into the season premier of Dominion. I thought that was going to be a series about angels and demons. Turns out is more about politics in some post-apocalyptic time. Go figure. I might watch Dominion this season. Who knows?

Car Trouble

Last month, a neighbor hit my dad's car. Luckily it was an extra car that nobody ever drives. My brother decided to take it to a local auto body shop. I gave my bro a ride home. The guy at the shop told my brother he would give him a call when he gets to the car.

I eat lunch with my dad three times a week. He was complaining that the auto body work was taking a long time. I did not give this comment much thought. After all, nobody drives the car. They don't need it.

Today my dad kept complaining about the timeline, telling me we should have told the body shop that we needed it quick for a trip. It was then that I figured my dad was trying to communicate that he wanted his car back.

I looked up the body shop online. It took a while because I had their name wrong. I found them and called them up. We are actually getting two things done - damage from the neighbor and some bumper painting from a previous accident.

The body shop guy said the neighbor's insurance was trying to save money and get them to use a used car part. The body shop guy rejected two broke down used fenders, then finally talked the insurance company into springing for a new part.

The car is going to be done Monday afternoon. Finally dad can get his car back. Then again, the thing is just going to sit in the street. My brother forces himself to drive the thing once a week so the car does not fail from non-use. Next time we will get a time estimate when we drop the thing off.

Hard Labor

Every week the family does about an hour of family cleaning. Usually we split up some long term tasks. Sometimes we need to work together. We used to do this cleaning at the same time. Now we just hand out the assignments and let the family work at their own pace during the week.

This week we were moving items out of Momoko's study in preparation for us turning it into a man cave. Or more precisely, it will be Momoko's woman cave. Kit Kat did not want to carry any heavy furniute down the stairs. Therefore she volunteered to separate Momoko's desk from her hutch. That way we could carry down the big pieces separately.

Of course Kit Kat could not get the hutch off the top of the desk. She needed a lot of assistance. Eventually it was decided that we would detach Momoko's desktop and carry it attached to the hutch. That took around an hour just for the disassembly.

With all the moving of furniture and boxes, we spent around three hours this weekend moving half of Momoko's study downstairs into the library. We were all very broken after that. And I needed to go visit my dad for father's day.

I felt sorry for the kids because they worked hard and long. Therefore I decided to go out and pick up Kit Kat's choice of fast food for a late lunch. We chose Wendy's. I brought Little Kat along with me because he was unsure of what he wanted me to order him.

Little Kat eventually chose a large Baconator meal. We walked into Wendy's and waited a while before our meals were ready to bring home. I only had a side salad because I had a huge breakfast. I left the family eating back at home so I could see my dad and return to cut the grass outside.